Book Jackets

The cover for Tina Fey‘s first book, Bossypants starred at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Flavorpill has a photo: Fey’s face superimposed on the body of a large man with a tie and a white-collar shirt. In the video embedded above, Fey talked to Zap2it about the eye-popping cover.

Fey said: “I shot it with this great, great photographer named Ruven Afanador, and it was an idea he had that I really liked. It’s funny to me that some people think it’s funny, and some people, it makes them furious. I can’t figure out why. It’s not dirty or mean… it’s a memorable image, at the very least.”

As a writer, Fey is best known for her comedy writing on Saturday Night Live. Bossypants comes out in hardcover on April 5, 2011 from Reagan Arthur Books.

Cover art may be the toughest task facing self-published authors. Last weekend, Andy Carpenter (ACD & Co. principle and former VP & Art Director St. Martin’s Press) and Eric Baker (design director of O Design and The Design Observer contributing editor) shared some cover design resources for self-published authors.

GalleyCat prowled the floor of the Self-Publishing Book Expo last Saturday. We picked up some book pitching tips and encouraged self-published authors to enter our ongoing Book Pitch contest–a chance to win a free ticket to the eBook Summit in December.

At the Expo’s “Design and Illustration: How Your Cover Can Sell Volumes” panel discussion, Baker and Carpenter shared a list of public domain image collections and other book cover resources that self-published writers can use.  “When you self-publish, it behooves you to dress up your book as much as possible,” Carpenter reminded the audience. The complete list of resources follows below.

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Parts model Kimbra Hickey landed a hand modeling job where the end product was re-printed 17 million times. Her hands hold the apple on the cover of Twilight, the first book in Stephenie Meyer‘s vampire saga.

In a New York Post interview, Hickey confessed she wished for a little more fame from the cover job. The forty-year-old model admits to having acted “a bit goofy” about her lack of status.

Hickey sometimes haunts the Barnes & Noble nearby her New York City apartment to alert customers reading the books. She has even gone so far as to carry an apple in her purse so she can re-create the pose upon request. Right now, she works mainly as a massage therapist and she performs parts-modeling a few days each month.

Hickey told the New York Post: “It was major exposure for my hands, but nobody knew who I was…I see people reading it on the subway, and I say, ‘Those are my hands! I’m a hand model!’ I’m sure they think I’m crazy–a crazy lady on the subway.”
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Scholastic unveiled the cover for Maggie Stiefvater‘s final book in the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy, Forever. Stylistically, it follows the first two books, Shiver and Linger. All three covers feature bold color palettes, a natural woodsy frame, a wolf, and the title in a white center. Forever was done in shades of crimson red.

Scholastic associate art director Chris Stengel was the mastermind behind all three Wolves of Mercy Falls‘ covers. In an interview with Publisher’s Weekly, he revealed: “I definitely knew that I wanted to make the third book red. It seemed logical to me to follow the progression of the seasons. At first, I wasn’t sure how close to Shiver the sequels should be, but once the artwork came together, it felt right to create a variation on the theme. The reversal of positions for the girl, boy, and the wolves relates to the plots of the books.”

Stiefvater became a published novelist at age 26 with her Books of Faerie novels. A year later, she published two more novels including the second fairy novel and a paranormal romance featuring a werewolf and a human girl. The first book in the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy, Shiver went on to sell more than 130,000 copies in 2009. Linger came out in July 2010. Forever will be released in July 2011.

Today Granta unveiled that gorgeous cover for Granta 112, painted by truck and bus artist Islam Gull from a Bhutta village in Karachi.

Released this fall, the new Pakistan-themed issue will feature work by Daniyal Mueenuddin, Fatima Bhutto, and Lorraine Adams working with Ayesha Nasir.

Here’s more from the journal: ” Gull, born in Peshawar, has been painting since the age of thirteen. Twenty-two years ago he settled in Karachi, where he now teaches his craft to two young apprentices. In addition to trucks and buses, Gull decorates buildings and housewares and has worked for several consulates in Karachi, as well as traveling to Kandahar, Afghanistan to paint trucks there. Commissioned with the assistance of the British Council in Karachi, Gull produced two chipboard panels to be photographed for the magazine’s cover, using the same industrial paints with which he embellishes Pakistani trucks.”

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Simon & Schuster has unveiled the cover for journalist Bob Woodward‘s forthcoming book, Obama’s Wars. The 441-page tome will hit shelves on September 27th, Wooward’s 16th book.

Here’s more from the release: “Working behind the scenes for 18 months, Woodward has written the most intimate and sweeping portrait of Obama making the critical decisions on the Afghanistan War, the secret war in Pakistan and the worldwide fight against terrorism. Drawing on internal memos, classified documents, meeting notes and hundreds of hours of interviews with most of the key players, including the president, Woodward offers an original, you-are-there account of Obama and his team in this time of turmoil and uncertainty.”

The cover image is embedded above. In addition, The Washington Post will publish excerpts from the book on the week of publication.

The Penguin imprint Grosset & Dunlap released Dick and Jane and Vampires this month, bringing the mash-up trend to children’s books. We caught up with Penguin designer Megan Bennett to find out how they created more than 80 mash-up images for the book.

Bennett explained: “This book was truly a collaborative project. After the author, Laura Marchesani, had brilliantly reinterpreted text from the original Dick and Jane stories to fit the addition of Vampire to the plot, it was my job to see that the illustrator did the same with the addition of Vampire into the illustrations. Laura and I worked together, using her manuscript, to compile the art suggestions for each story.

She added: “Then, I amassed a sort of digital library of original Dick and Jane illustrations from the previous stories that would be used in this book. This library was passed along to the illustrator, Tommy Hunt, with the illustration suggestions.”

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Comedian and writer Dan Wilbur has launched a Tumblr blog simplifying the titles of popular books–revealing the juicy bits that a tasteful book jacket might hide. It’s perfect for a sleepy summer Friday.

Above, you can see Wilbur’s take on Stieg Larsson‘s bestselling The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. Another one of our favorites was “A Quaint Midafternoon Panic Attack” as the new title for Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. You can submit your own suggestions to dwilbs [at] gmail [dot] com.

Here’s more about the site: “This page is for people who have trouble slogging through the information on book jackets or feel intimidated by the title and cover itself. How many times have you perused the cover of a novel only to rub your sore eyes and realize you’ve learned NOTHING from the book’s title?! This blog is for people who do not have thousands of hours to read book reviews or blurbs or first sentences. I will cut through all the cryptic crap, and give you the meat of the story in one condensed image.” (Via Sarah Weinman)

In its annual “The Chart of Fantasy Art” survey, Orbit Books revealed that a whopping 35 percent of all fantasy cover dragons were colored green in 2009.

Here’s an excerpt about dragon trends on fantasy covers: “Green dragons featured prominently on fantasy covers this year — 35% of the dragons spotted wore dazzling shades of moss and emerald. Close behind were orange/rust colored dragons. Although we have no actual proof of this, our best scientific hypothesis is that dragons, being just a fantastical mashup of a lizard and a dinosaur, tend to most frequently follow actual reptilian coloring… BORING. We were happy to see some white, red, and black dragon activity, but one question: Where are all the purple dragons?”

Earlier this week, the survey revealed that swords dominated fantasy cover art for the second year in a row. Despite the proliferation of sword covers, the pointy symbols appeared on 20 percent less covers than last year–a dramatic reduction in an infamous cliché. In addition, abs are in and stilettos are out for fantasy heroine cover images.

It’s only August, but for those with Twilight fans on their Christmas list it might not be a bad idea to start shopping early. Bookseller reports that Stephenie Meyer‘s Twilight Saga is coming out in limited paperback editions with a white background for its covers. The edge of the pages as well as the back cover will be a bloody crimson.

Here’s more from Bookseller: “The four limited-edition titles: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, will be published by Atom on 14th October as £7.99 paperbacks, available only in the UK and Ireland, and Little, Brown’s territories including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India. The white editions will not be available in the US.”

GalleyCat reported back in June that Stephenie Meyer is “really burned out on vampires.” Despite those feelings, the franchise churned out The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner published earlier this summer in addition to the white-covered special edition.